Abstract Based on VAR model of empirical analysis, this paper takes the American cooperatives as an example to name and verify the “tread wheel” effect during the evolution of cooperatives. Namely, with the commodification of agricultural production, the farmers found the cooperatives to improve the level of their per capita labor productivity. Then, the increasing output intensifies the market competition. The small and weak cooperatives go bankrupt or are merged while the surviving expand the scale of management and have their service capacity enhanced, which continuously improves their members’ per capita labor productivity to deal with intensifying competition. However, it also intensifies the competition, which will improve members’ per capita labor productivity again, resulting in competition intensified. The “tread wheel” moves in circles continually, so that the average scale of cooperatives larger and larger, with the members’ per capita labor productivity improved continuously and the total number of cooperatives decreasing. This paper makes a profound analysis of the change rule mentioned above——the operation mechanism of the “tread wheel” effect,expecting to reveal the inner mechanism and evolution rule of the cooperative development in order to provide a reference for the policies matching time of the development of the cooperatives in China.
LOU Feng. The “Tread Wheel” Effect in the Development of Agricultural Cooperatives ——A New Theory and An Empirical Test Based on VAR Model. Economic Survey, 2014, 31(5): 026.
2014, Vol. 31 
